Sharing a vision

While Jim Potter's recently published first novel has given voices to an array of characters, his wife, artist Alex Potter, has given those characters three-dimensional faces.

“Taking Back the Bullet,” is not Potter’s first book. Ten years ago he published “Cop in the Classroom: Lesson I’ve Learned, Tales I’ve Told,” which shares stories of how he communicated with students while he was a school resource officer.

However, this is the first work of fiction for the retired Reno County Sheriff’s deputy.

Now, after 40 years of marriage, not only are the Potters supportive of each other's creative projects, for this book, they have produced collaboratively.

“It is Jim’s project, it's his novel, and it has taken him 10 years to give birth to it,” Alex Potter said.

During that time, about 15 characters were living in his head, and he would talk about them with Alex. This inspired her to turn the characters into clay busts. While she used her imagination, she would specifically ask Jim what they looked like, wanting to know the details of their appearances.

That led the sculptor to start creating the faces she imagined from his stories about characters who come together during a botched bank robbery.

First came the sculpture of Tom Jennings, a police officer, whom Jim described as “obese as a mutant Idaho potato in a jiggling gelatin suit.”

“I would say 'So, how big are they? How old are they?'” Alex Potter said. Then she would use her creative license and start creating sculptures.

“Jim knows everything about his characters,” she said.

He knows them as well as anyone would know a close friend of 10 years. Though he doesn’t use all the details about his characters in the book, it helps with the background - where they went to high school, what they like to eat, their astrological signs, none of which is in the book. But it helped ensure diversity.

The Potters' rural Reno County home is an artist’s retreat. On their property, they planted a ring of cedar trees. It ended up a pet cemetery, and they named it Sandhenge, after Stonehenge, the prehistoric site in England. They also named their publishing company Sandhenge and Jim Potter independently published his book, though, Mennonite Press of Newton was the printer.

“You have heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a child,” Jim said. “Well it takes a village to publish a book as well." Keeping the project local, Gina Laiso, created the book cover and the photography of the sculptures.

Jan Hurst, McPherson, did the editing, but because he was the publisher, Jim had the final decision on the project.

“Nobody loves your book the way you do,” Jim Potter said. “This is a novel, and have you ever seen a novel with photographs? It was a lot of work, but it was worth it."

Potter said the idea came to him while he was with Reno County Sheriff’s Department, where he began in 1981. For 22 years, he was the school resource officer.

“I never dreamed I would write a fictional book,” Potter said. “In law enforcement, you do a lot of writing, but there better not be anything fictional in your reports.”

While the obese police officer Tom Jennings looks nothing like the slender 6-foot, 4-inch Jim Potter, the author acknowledges there is truth in every novel.

“You take something and use your imagination,” Jim said. “No character is one person, for sure.”

He created Tom Jennings as a police officer because he wanted to start with something he knew.

“I needed something familiar,” he said. “We have an artist and a police officer that was a good way to start.The further I got into the book I created characters I had never met before. There is a 12-year-old albino; I don't know someone who is albino. Hard to say where the thoughts come from.

“In writing fiction - I write what I want to know, but I also write what I want to learn. I had to research some chapters; it had to be authentic," he said.

Jim said the characters took him on the journey.

“This is a very character-driven novel; I know my characters very well. Then my favorite part is to set the two characters down in a room and have them talk to each other; they can do it. And that’s when I feel like a transcriber. That's when I feel like I have done all this work, I have the plot figured out, I have the people figured out, and I'm working on this story, and I put these people together to see what they will say. That is probably the most fun."

“And you get surprises,” Alex Potter said.

Part of publishing requires marketing the book. Potter has had local book signings at the library, Bookends and Bluebird Books. He plans to do a reading at 7 p.m. Dec. 21 at the Hutchinson Art Center. The plan is to have the characters on display.

The first time they set up all the sculptures in Alex’s studio for a video session with Laiso, Alex was moved to have all the characters in one room.

“It was so powerful,” she said, "It was the first time they had all looked at each other in the same room and blended the energy of each other. I left it up for a week, and it was so uplifting to experience that every time I went in the door.”

The book focuses on the theme of self-discovery. The characters overcome stigmas and find their calling in life.

“It’s a story about people who are empowered,” said Jim Potter.

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